While snow may have restricted the audience attending the Pro Arte Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer) on Saturday night, those who came were amply rewarded with a virtually perfect program of superb music.

The program brought together three Austrian works, two by those Classical-era titans, Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the third by the Austrian early Romantic Franz Schubert.

The combination of the first two was particularly stimulating, an opportunity to reckon how different from each other were these composers who are so often bracketed together.

The E-flat Quartet is No. 3 in the Op. 50 set that some commentators have viewed as the response by Haydn (below) to the set of six quartets that Mozart had recently published in Haydn’s honor.

Composed in 1790, a year before his death and only three years after the Haydn work, the Quartet in B-flat, K. 589, by Mozart (below) was his penultimate quartet, part of a series to be written for the King of Prussia who played the cello, which is featured prominently in the quartet.

Here we have a Mozartian style that is expansive and exploratory. Amid music of great lyric beauty and even vivacity, we have a Menuetto third movement whose Trio, or midsection, is remarkably dark and ambiguous. (You can hear a period-instrument performance of the third movement in the YouTube video at the bottom)

The Pro Arte players brought out the individuality of the two different styles quite beautifully. To my ears, the viola lines were delivered with notable strength and color by Sally Chisholm.

The final work, and the longest, was one of Schubert’s amazing late quartets. The No. 13 in A minor, D. 804), from 1824 is known as the “Rosamunde” Quartet because the second movement is the elaboration by Schubert (below) of the lovely melody in the well-known interlude in his incidental music for the play of that title.

Despite a somewhat moody first movement, the work as a whole is suffused with Schubert’s very special, very personal lyricism. Analyses of it can be instructive, but ultimately this remains music for the soul, not just the brain, I think.

The Pro Arte understands that well, and gave a generous demonstration of its beauties.

It proved such a wonderful concert, for which we can only give warm thanks to the UW-Madison’s Mead-Witter School of Music where the Pro Arte Quartet has been an artist-in-residence since World War II.

Yet I always find the most satisfying version to be the one made by English tenor Ian Bostridge with Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andnes.

Bostridge’s tenor voice lends a lightness that has a certain clarity and almost speech-like quality to it.

And Bostridge, who wrote the excellent book “Schubert Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession” – a song-by-song analysis of the cycle — knows the texts and contexts of the songs inside and out. His are well-informed and thoroughly thought-out interpretations.

The whole cycle takes about 70 minutes to listen to.

This year The Ear might do one of the 24 songs in the cycle each day and then the entire cycle in one sitting at the end.

The different approach might yield some new insights and new pleasure.

Anyway, choose your own artists and your own way of listening.

But it is a great and timely choice.

Here is “Good Night,” the first song of “Winterreise”:

And here is “The Organ Grinder,” the last song and a favorite of writer Samuel Beckett who found a shared sensibility in the lean austerity of the music of the music and the text:

What winter music would you listen to or recommend to mark the solstice and the coming of winter?

“From oboist to organist, whether one performs pop or Prokofiev, every musician has a story of an intricate and sometimes unsettling pathway to a professional career.

“Violinist David Kim, (below) who will visit the School of Music TODAY and Tuesday, Oct. 16 and 17, is no different. Since 1999, Kim has been the concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“On Tuesday at 7: 30 p.m. in Mills Hall, Kim will offer a talk, “From Prodigy to Professionalism – A Life in Music.” (Editor’s note: You can sample Kim’s terrific conversational style and accessible analysis in the interview with him about his violin in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

“He’ll describe his experiences and struggles to reach the pinnacle of his career, interspersed with performances of some of Mr. Kim’s favorite works. It will be a humorous, sometimes jarring, and often poignant story not to be missed.

“Kim’s talk will be followed by a concert with UW-Madison strings and pianist Thomas Kasdorf. The program will include “Sonatensatz” (Sonata Movement) by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897); “Banjo and Fiddle” by William Kroll (1901-1980); “Meditation” from the opera “Thais” by Jules Massenet (1842-1912); and “The Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741).

“I’ve always shared anecdotes about my crazy upbringing,” Kim wrote in an email. “From the beginning, my story seemed to resonate, especially with parents. After all, who doesn’t have a story of an overzealous parent from some stage of life!

“Now I share my story numerous times each season and have been urged by many to write a book – a la the widely read book, ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom.’

“But that will probably never happen as I prefer speaking during my concerts and love seeing the audience react in person.”

“Join us for our “Conversation & Concert” with David Kim, our strings players and pianist Thomas Kasdorf (below), a UW-Madison alumnus and graduate student. Tickets are $15 for adults, $5 for students, except Mead Witter music majors, who receive free admission. Buy tickets here. They will also be sold at the door, starting at 6:30 p.m.

“Additional Events: Violin Master Class is TODAY, Monday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m. in Morphy Hall; Strings Orchestral Excerpts Master Class is on Tuesday, Oct. 17, at 11 a.m. in Morphy Hall. Both classes are free and open to the public.

I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t like playing or hearing the music of Chopin (below).

Can you?

But just why the 19th-century Romantic composer has such universal appeal is hard to explain.

One of the best explanations The Ear has read came recently from pianist Jeremy Denk, whose essay on “Chopin as a cat” appeared in The New York Times.

Denk, who has performed two outstanding solo recitals in Madison, is clearly an important musical thinker as well as a great performer. You can also see that at once if you read his excellent blog “Think Denk.”

The Ear suspects the current essay grew out of some remarks that Denk gave during a lecture on Chopin’s pedaling at the UW-Madison, and will be incorporated into the book he is working on that includes his previous acclaimed essays in The New Yorker magazine.

Denk (below), who has lately been performing an intriguing survey concert that covers 600 years of music, thinks that Chopin’s uniqueness resides in how he consolidated and fused both conservative values and radical, even modern, innovations.

To the Ear, it is the best modern analysis of Chopin that he has read since the major treatment that the acclaimed pianist-musicologist Charles Rosen wrote about the Polish “poet of the piano” in his terrific book “The Romantic Generation.”

Moreover, the online web version of Denk’s essay is much more substantial and satisfying than the newspaper print edition. It has not only audio-visual performances of important Chopin works by major artists such as Arthur Rubinstein and Krystian Zimerman, it also suggests, analyzes and praises some “old-fashioned” historical recordings of Chopin by Ignaz Friedman, Alfred Cortot and Josef Hoffmann.

ALERT: Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, the UW Wind Ensemble will perform a FREE concert. The program features “Concerto X” by Scott McAllister with clarinet soloist Wesley Warnhoff, adjunct professor of clarinet.It is a work based on grunge music that was born in the heavy metal music of the late 80s and early 90s, including a melody from Nirvana’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” Also on the program is “In Wartime” by David Del Tredici, which was inspired by the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001; and the Second Suite in F Major for Military Band by Gustav Holst.

On this Sunday, Dec. 13, the young singers of Madison Youth Choirs (MYC, seen below at the Winter Concert last year) will present the 2015 Winter Concert Series, “Inquiry: Science, Music, Imagination” at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Madison, 1609 University Avenue, near Camp Randall.

Over 14 weeks of rehearsals in preparation for the concerts, the 330 young vocalists (ages 7-18) in MYC’s nine performing choirs have been learning to use the tools of observation, experimentation, and analysis to reach a deeper understanding of their choral repertoire.

Students have also begun to recognize the role that resilience plays in both scientific and musical fields, learning how to work through moments of frustration and uncertainty to reach new discoveries.

The choirs will perform a varied program, including works by Benjamin Britten, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Vincent Persichetti; a Peruvian lament, a Spanish villancico, and a newly-created arrangement of the oldest-known surviving English song.

Tickets for each of the three concerts (high school ensembles at 1:30 p.m., boychoirs at 4 p.m., girlchoirs at 7 p.m.) will be $10 for general admission, $5 for students age 7-18 and free for children under 7.

Audience members will need a separate ticket for each concert.

Here is the schedule:

1:30 p.m. High School Ensembles featuring a guest appearance by the MYC-Capitol Lakes Intergenerational Choir

4 p.m. Boychoirs

7 p.m. Girlchoirs

Tickets available at the door, $10 for general admission, $5 for students 7-18, and free for children under 7

This concert is generously endowed by the Diane Ballweg Performance Fund with additional support from the American Girl’s Fund for Children, BMO Harris Bank, the Madison Community Foundation, and the Wisconsin Arts Board.

About the Madison Youth Choirs (MYC): Recognized as an innovator in youth choral music education, Madison Youth Choirs (MYC) welcomes singers of all ability levels, annually serving more than 1,000 young people, ages 7-18, through a wide variety of choral programs in our community. Cultivating a comprehensive music education philosophy that inspires self-confidence, personal responsibility and a spirit of inquiry leading students to become “expert noticers,” MYC creates accessible, meaningful opportunities for youth to thrive in the arts and beyond.